Systematic Inventive Thinking Division Examples
Systematic Inventive Thinking
Introduction
Innovation is the response of an individual or a group of people with a common interest to new needs . This can be stimulated by the search for better products, better solutions, the appearance of new requirements for old tools or services, or by new (or existing) market needs. It is the more powerful tool for the creation of new business, new products, new services or even new technologies. In this article I want to show the results of an experiment done some time ago about how this search for innovation can be accomplished, using a alternative way of thinking on creativity.
In those companies where the innovative attitude is one of the key characteristics of their people, the implementation at the enterprise-level processes of the appropriate mechanisms to incorporate their ideas is not only mandatory; it also represents one of the most valuable elements that eventually will lead to a great company success in the long term.
For many, the implementation of procedures devoted to the search for innovative solutions may sound a bit strange. This is easy to understand: innovation is usually viewed as the result of inspiration, and this implies an uncontrolled series of events.
Everybody knows concepts such as «brainstorming», «lateral thinking», and other similar ideas, related to the innovation and creativity. The underlying premise is that a big enough, sequential flow of ideas, even an unordered one, can and will eventually lead to solutions for a given problem.
What is Systematic Inventive Thinking?
However, in the last decades this paradigm has been challenged by another way to approximate the question of problem solving through innovative solutions. The Theory of Innovative Problem Solving, TIPS, says that truly innovative ideas obtained as solutions to several problems share a set of patterns. Moreover, according to TIPS, a big flow of ideas, generated as the result of one of the traditional techniques (say, e.g., «brainstorming») does not enforce the achievement of a truly adequate solution, nor they would be particularly innovative solutions. The rationale for this is that the effort to think far from the actual problem scenario, the abstraction out of its specific environment, makes the brain to defocus from the problem at hand and to digress in a non very productive way. The Systematic Inventive Thinking techniques, derived from TIPS, advocate for a different strategy.
The Systematic Inventive Thinking method tries to analyze the existing products or services in order to find new, innovative products or services, or new businesses. It is based on two key principles. The first is the so called Closed World principle, that says we should only use those elements close at hand, included in the physical space immediately surrounding you and the problem you work in. Think about it: when we look at innovative solutions (discovered by you or someone else), the most surprising ones are those that were right under our noses, those that we didn't think of, even when they were so close, right there! The rationale is that forcing us to use only those resources at hand, in that closed environment, helps the brain to focus on the problem and on those resources.
The second principle is stated in the sentence Function Follows Form . This means that instead of starting from a problem and then search for a solution to it, we start with a conceptual, virtual solution, and try to visualize what problems can be solved with it. This may appear a bit abstract, but the Systematic Inventive Thinking method leads to a series of patterns that the researchers have found in a huge number of innovative solutions that were analyzed, in several fields of knowledge, in the industry, etc. From these patterns they have created a series of procedures, that will lead to the definition of new, innovative products and services, starting from existing ones. That is, we can find innovative products and services just by following, systematically, a well defined series of steps.
The patterns
Before explaining the results of the experiment performed some years ago, I want to describe very briefly the patterns that the Systematic Inventive Thinking method provides. I will not explain how to apply these techniques (this could be a matter of another article), but rather show what investigators found after analysing a big number of innovative solutions, and give a couple of examples.
Subtraction
Researchers have found that innovative products and services tend to have had something removed. Moreover, this removed element is usually something that was previously thought to be essential to use the product or service. The technique tries to help you finding innovative solutions by removing an apparently essential component of an existing solution.
An example of this can be the Apple Ipod Shuffle, which was the result of removing the screen of an Apple Ipod (an component that, up to then, was thought to be essential for such kind of system). With this, Apple created a new product that helped users to discover a new way of using MP3 players.
Another example can be the removal of the recording function and internal speakers by Sony from one of their recorder products, and the creation of the first Sony Walkman, which was only a headphones oriented cassette player, but that revolutionized the way we listen music.
Division
It was also found that innovative products and services tend to have had a component divided out of the product or service and placed back somewhere into the usage situation. This was usually done in a way that initially seemed unproductive or unworkable.
An simple example of the application of this technique was the removal of the control buttons from video players… and the creation of the first remote control.
Multiplication
Innovative products and services were also found to tend to have had a component copied but changed in some way, usually in a way that initially seemed unnecessary or redundant.
A very simple example of this is the Picture-in-Picture function in advanced TVs, where a small box in the screen can show the contents that are provided in a TV channel while the main screen is showing the contents of another TV channel.
Task Unification
Innovative products and services sometimes also tend to have had certain tasks brought together and «unified» within one component of the product or service; this component was previously thought to be unrelated to that task.
One recent example of this technique, that is assigning an additional task to an existing resource, is shown in the smart QLED TVs created by Samsung, were the screen can be set up so that it appears similar to the area around it when not in use.
Attribute Dependency
Finally, sometimes innovative products and services tend to have had two attributes correlated with each other. They are usually attributes that previously seemed unrelated.
A simple example of this technique can be found in the mugs, wine bottles or baby bottles that change color when the liquid inside reaches the proper temperature.
The experiment
In a company where I worked in the past, I thought about applying these techniques to the existing company products. This of course should be properly justified, a priori. So I talked to some of the people in charge of innovation and quality assurance, and convinced them to do an experiment. We would perform this experiment, put to test the SIT techniques, and analyze whether it was worth the incorporation of these techniques, in the form of institutionalised procedures, to the creation of new products.
The experiment was performed as follows: we chose two products from the different software products of the company. We selected a group of about 5 people from their development, management and sales team, and we planned one workshop with each of the teams, in two sessions of 3 hours each.
Each session was executed in one day. The first day I provided a short description of the rationale behind the Systematic Inventive Thinking method, as well as an overview of the different techniques. We then tried to work with the first three techniques, leaving the application of the slightly more complex techniques for the second day.
The results of the experiment were really impressive. By applying the first three techniques, each team found at least two or three potential new products with each technique. With the more complex techniques, they also found at least one promising new product or service that could be developed. In the following table we can see some of the final metrics of the experiment. The final result, answering the initial question that stimulated the execution of the experiment, that is, whether the application of the SIT techniques were worthy for the company, could be answered by the numbers of the fourth and sixth rows: we could provide up to 8 new, promising, potential new products or services, just by analysing and applying the SIT techniques to a couple of existing products, with a total of 80 hours. That is, an average of 1 new, potential product or service after just 10 hours of analysis. And this is truly impressive, in my opinion.
Conclusions
The conclusions of this experiment were quite clear. The acceptance of the methodology and collaboration by the teams, together with the numerous findings found throughout the different sessions, allowed us to establish a clear affirmative answer to the question posed by the objective of the experiment – which we recall that was the assessment of the applicability of Systematic Inventive Thinking techniques for intangible products such as software products.
Although it was not the objective of the experiment, the effectiveness of the proven methodology was demonstrated. In a simple way, following a clear series of steps, numerous innovative solutions were obtained, which (hopefully) could lead to the creation of new products and novel services, and will most likely contribute to the expansion of the market share of the company in certain sectors. In addition, multiple innovative solutions found that coincided with some developments that, stimulated by customer needs, the teams had previously explored. This allowed us to think that, even without these stimuli from the client, new innovative solutions could be obtained that would be attractive to the customers, which would allow the companies to anticipate their needs.
The teams highly valued the proposal to execute this analysis themselves in their own work environment, on other products or services that are already being developed and exploited. The simple way in which it has been seen that the proven methodology can be applied, together with the high efficiency shown, satisfied them to a great extent, to the point of considering the objectives of future analysis themselves. In this regard, they have also considered the presence of a moderator who, apart from the products, is in charge of the task of channeling the different discussions, and of ensuring that the procedures suggested by the methodology are scrupulously followed.
Given the results of the experiments carried out, as well as the conclusions drawn from them, my recommendation then to that company, and now to the company of the reader of this article, is to institutionalise the application of Systematic Inventive Thinking techniques, through an internal training course, and internal procedures. A plan for the celebration of similar workshops with additional product teams in other areas of the company was also recommended to be included as part of the I+D+i short term plan and long term strategy of the company.
If you think your company could profit from these techniques, let me repeat my recommendation: you are really encouraged to perform such a similar experiment yourself. Do not hesitate. It is really cheap. You will spend just a bunch of hours in determine whether these techniques can be applied by your teams to your services or products. And the benefits can be really big.
References
[1] Boyd, Drew. Inside the box : a proven system of creativity for breakthrough results. New York, Simon & Schuster, 2014, Reprint. ☞
[2] Inside The Box Innovation web site ☞
Systematic Inventive Thinking Division Examples
Source: https://medium.com/@JCGonzalez/systematic-inventive-thinking-20c8612715df
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